ah yeah, I mean if that's the case, I think that's orthogonal, right?

In my interpretation of the words, I tend to think of optimism as being the brave thing because having hope is more difficult, and IME, you can only muster energy to solve a problem if hope exists. Conversely, pessimism to me feels cheap and easy, and if you say "everything's fucked, what's the point" then nothing gets solved

So, it's probably more of a quadrant/compass along the axes of optimism/pessimism and proactive/passive